Explores the emergence of the modern, first-person persona as manifested in autocitation. Assessing the influence of Augustine, Anselm, Ockham, and others, Kimmelman traces the development of autocitation in the works of Guillem IX, Marcabru, and…
Kimmelman, Burt Joseph.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 1741A.
Mentions Chaucer among poets (Guillem IX, Marcabru, Dante, and especially Langland) who helped develop the distinction between history and fiction and who showed themselves to be individuals, not for self-promotion but to identify themselves…
Gaylord, Alan T.
[Provo, Utah]: Chaucer Studio; [Richmond, Ky.]: Southeastern Medieval Association, 1999. Supplement to special issue of Medieval Perspectives, no. 14
An aural history of alliterative verse in English, from Caedmon's Hymn to "traces" and imitations in modern poetry, with emphasis on medieval tradition. First delivered as a plenary address at the 1998 meeting of the Southeastern Medieval…
Khoury, Marcelle Muasher.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Virginia, 2014. Fully accessible via https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/sn009z07c (accessed March 11, 2026)
Argues that "fifteenth-century alchemical poets, George Ripley and Thomas Norton, perceived themselves to be 'Chaucerian' in far deeper ways than has been recognized," joining "author, reader and pilgrim on an essentially hermeneutical journey to…
Argues that Gower's intention in "Confessio Amantis" is both "poetic, as well as political." Emphasizes how Chaucer and Gower are concerned with "authority and experience" in their poems. Discusses WBT in relation to Gower's "Tale of Florent."
Kumamoto, Sadahiro.
Masahiro Hori, Tomoji Tabata, and Sadahiro Kumamoto, eds. Stylistic Studies of Literature: In Honour of Professor Hiroyuki Ito (New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 71-92.
Kumamoto examines eleven syntactical patterns used in conjunction with poetic enjambment. Chaucer's poetry contains more enjambment than do three anonymous romances included for comparison--and Chaucer uses enjambment more in his early poetry (BD,…
Spearing, A. C.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. Subjects on the World's Stage: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), pp. 13-37.
In the development of the literary subjective "I," Chaucer's work--especially KnT with its images of prison and mirrors that become images for the exploration of subjectivity--greatly influenced subsequent writers from Hoccleve to Spenser.
Dance, Richard.
Helen Cooper and Robert R. Edwards, eds. Oxford History of Poetry in English. Volume 2, Medieval Poetry, 1100–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 71-87.
Concentrates on the relationship between Old and Middle English poetic forms, especially during the transition from Old to Middle English, focusing on the "Soul's Address to the Body" and "The Ormulum" before concluding with a discussion of Chaucer's…
Manly's reordering of the final lines of ParsP in his 1928 edition is contested by manuscript evidence, Chaucer's general usage of pronouns, and the intelligibility and literary excellence of the original version.
Assesses Chaucer's and Lydgate's inset lyrics for the ways that they imply "a sense of poetry as an assemblage of physical materials collected from the past, and poets as the collectors and mediators of those materials." Considers aspects of BD;…
Cherewatuk, Karen, and Carson Koepke.
Chaucer Review 53.4 (2018): 449-84.
Explores the cultural ties between the Anglican Church on the American frontier and the Church of England through Elizabeth Whipple's Chaucer portrait.
Dahlberg, Charles.
Chapter 6 in Charles Dahlberg, The Literature of Unlikeness (Hanover, N.H. and London: University Press of New England, 1988), pp. 125-48.
Dahlberg suggests that "Chaucer's use of first person reflects in its stylistic variations the ambiguities of love" and that "the serious third-person poet of the Boethian short poems is essentially the same as the...first-person narrator or persona…
Kinneavy, Gerald B.
Chaucer Review 3.4 (1969): 280-303.
Reads Gavin Douglas's poem as an examination of how poetry can lead to honor, focusing on the originality of the poem but noting its dependencies as well, including the influence of the eagle from HF.
Finnel, Andrew J.
Chaucer Review 8.2 (1973): 147-58.
Argues that Purse was written soon after the accession of Henry IV, addressed to the new monarch and composed as Chaucer's plea for funds while he was residing in the close of Westminster Abbey in order to avoid debts.
Gardiner, Alan.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 19-27.
Describes the narrator of the GP as "naïve but all-seeing," used variably by Chaucer to guide reader response and provoke unsettled reactions. Not wholly consistent, the narrator is a device that evokes "complex, contradictory attitudes" that seem…
Burrow, J. A.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 61-75.
Although Chaucer frequently uses petitionary devices, he seldom seems comfortable in the humble role (cf. For, Purse,Scog). Usually he distorts the pattern in fictive and outrageous fashion (HF, LGW) to make jest of humility.
Carruthers, Mary (J.)
New Literary History 24 (1993): 881-904
Dante and Chaucer use "buildings of the imagination" to organize lists of names, lists less informational than "inventional"--sets of associated plots or ideas that may reverberate in the work in which they appear. Examples from HF and BD as well as…
Looks at Tudor scholarship's role in the development and maintenance of Chaucer's fame and canonicity, with particular attention to Speght, Thynne, and post-Reformation views of Chaucer's work.
Cook, Megan L.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
Examines how Tudor English antiquarians, including "historians, lexicographers, religious polemicists, and other readers with a professional, but, not necessary literary interest in the English past," played significant role" in the development and…
Roe, John, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Includes discussion (pp. 35-41) of the influence of Chaucer's account of Lucrece (LGW) on Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece," focusing on Chaucer's "particularly sympathetic defence" of Lucrece, despite his overstating of St. Augustine's compassion…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Emily Steiner and Lynn Ransom, eds. Taxonomies of Knowledge: Information and Order in Medieval Manuscripts (Philadelphia: The Schoenberg
Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, 2015), pp. 7-36.
Considers the appearance of the "mysterious inscription 'Ch'" beside several poems in MS Codex 902 in the University of Pennsylvania Libraries collection. Scholars have assumed that the "Ch" stands for Chaucer, but Strakhov argues that the poems are…
Greenfield, Stanley B., ed.
Weatherhead, A. Kingsley, ed.
New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968.
An anthology of English poetry, arranged chronologically, with a brief introduction on "The Experience of a Poem" and a glossary of poetic terminology. The selections from Old and Middle English poetry are generally given in modern verse translation,…
